[mythtv-users] tivo as a glorified tuner

[Brian Wood]

On Sep 17, 2006, at 7:25 AM, Karl Grindley wrote:

>
> Has anyone tried, succeeded or failed at using a Tivo as a glorified
> network tuner/encoder box?  Seems they are cheap ebay items these  
> days.
>
> Karl

Depends on exactly what you want to do. You can already use the TiVo  
to record something and then lift the recording off the box and  
transcode it to mpeg2, and from there to pretty much any format you  
might want. The process is time-consuming though, and a PVR-150 would  
do the job much more easily for not too much more $$$.

If you simply want to demodulate a TV signal to baseband video and  
audio a cheap VCR would do that for you more cheaply than a TiVo,  
they are not *that* cheap even on ebay. If you factor in the $12.50/ 
month fee the TiVo would wind up costing more after just 3 months or so.

So the TiVo can already be used as a "tuner/encoder", but I don't see  
any advantage to doing it that way. Any price advantage would be far  
outweighed by the additional hassle IMHO.

This all assumes you are talking about series 1 or 2 SD TiVos, as the  
series 3s are not cheap from any source as of yet.

My TiVo is doing a  good service for me right now, holding down my  
newspapers in the garage waiting to be re-cycled, so they don't blow  
around when I open the door. I can't find anything more useful for it  
at present :-)